Selection of Cindy Marten for San Diego Unified wasn’t even on the agenda

Yes
77% (210)

No
23% (63)

273 total votes.

While the selection of elementary-school Principal Cindy Marten as the next San Diego superintendent has won praise in many quarters, the process leading to her appointment has raised questions about whether the board followed open-meetings laws in making its choice.

All five San Diego Unified School District trustees voted in closed session last Tuesday to offer the job to Marten, a career educator who has served as Central Elementary principal for five years.

Trustees were holding a closed-door meeting with only one thing on the publicly posted agenda — the performance evaluation of Superintendent Bill Kowba.

During that meeting, Kowba informed the board he planned to retire June 30, trustees said. The discussion quickly turned to who might succeed Kowba and the board unanimously chose Marten, 46.

Board members introduced their candidate at a news conference the next night.

“We believe we were in full compliance with the law and we were doing it with the advice of our counsel,” said Trustee Richard Barrera, a community organizer who has long advocated for the public to be included in critical decisions. “When it becomes clear that the board unanimously knows who we want to hire, it just wouldn’t be honest to go out to the community as if we hadn’t made that decision.”

Hiring a superintendent is one of the most important decisions a school board can make. The process generally takes weeks or months and includes input from teachers, parents and other stakeholders.

The state’s Ralph M. Brown Act requires the public’s business to be conducted in public, although there are exemptions for discussions about litigation and personnel matters.

The law requires public boards to announce decisions made in closed session upon reconvening in public. In the case of the Marten pick, the board did not announce its decision until more than 24 hours after that.

U-T Watchdog asked school board President John Lee Evans how deciding to offer the job to Marten — during a closed meeting called for the purpose of evaluating the current superintendent — complies with open-meetings laws.

“That’s a legal question and I can’t give you a legal answer to that,” he said.

As to the decision to announce the decision on Wednesday, Evans said, “We decided that Wednesday would be a good time to make that announcement.”

The news conference, technically a meeting of the school board, was not publicly noticed until earlier that day. The Brown Act requires public boards to provide a three-day notice disclosing the topics for their meetings, except in emergencies.

School board members referred legal questions to the district lawyer, Lawrence Schoenke, and Schoenke declined to answer questions.

“As the district’s attorney, I cannot comment on closed session matters,” he wrote in an email.

Trustee Scott Barnett said the events complied with state requirements.

“There are a lot of armchair lawyers to have opinions and they certainly (are) entitled to those whether they’re accurate or not,” he wrote. “Legal counsel was asked to come into our closed session last week at one point and legal counsel has been consulted with and given us advice throughout this process.”

Marten said she would defer to the board about the process, although she would have supported a full public vetting. She said she is going to hold and attend a series of meetings and events so the public can get to know her before she takes over.

James Gazell, a professor of public administration at San Diego State University, said there may be room in the regulations governing the Brown Act but the San Diego school board did not comply with the intent of the law.

“It’s a public institution,” he said. “There’s a presumption that public institutions do business publicly to the greatest extent possible.”

Gazell said the school board actions are the latest example of public agencies appearing to flout the open-meetings rules.

“There’s a more general problem and that is the tendency among public institutions to do seemingly more and more of their business in private,” he said. “The school board is just an example of that.”

Last August, the county Board of Supervisors appointed Helen Robbins-Meyer to succeed retiring chief administrative officer Walt Ekard without any public input or discussion, just hours after his surprise resignation was announced. That, too, happened at a meeting at which the appointment was not on the posted agenda.

At 5 tonight, school board members are set to direct their staff to negotiate a multiyear contract with Marten. Evans said community members will have a chance to comment on that proposal at the public meeting.